to burn a man alive; he therefore prayed and required the
king to appease the fury and rigour of his justice and adopt a policy
of mercy and pardon. This noble protest was effective, and some
clemency was afterwards shown. But in 1547 the fanatical king, a mass
of physical and moral corruption, soured and gloomy, went to his end
amid the barbarities wreaked on the unhappy Vaudois Protestants. The
cries of three thousand of his butchered subjects and the smoke from
the ruins of twenty-five towns and hamlets were the incense of his
spirit's flight.

One important innovation at court, fraught with evil, is due to
Francis. "In the matter of ladies," says Du Bellay, "I must confess
that before his time they frequented the court but rarely and in
small numbers, but Francis on coming to his kingdom and considering
that the whole decoration of a court consisted in the presence of
ladies, willed to people it with them more than was the custom in
ancient times." Then was begun that unhappy intervention of women in
the government of the state, the results of which will be only too
evident in the further course of this story.

[Illustration: LA FONTAINE DES INNOCENTS.]

CHAPTER XII

_Rise of the Guises--Huguenot and Catholic--the Massacre of St.
Bartholomew_

"Beware of Montmorency and curb the power of the Guises," was the
counsel of the dying Francis to his son. Henry II., dull and
heavy-witted that he was, neglected the advice, and the Guises
flourished in the sun of royal favour. The first Duke of Guise and
founder of his renowned house was Claude, a poor cadet of Rene II.,
Duke of Lorraine. He succeeded in allying by marriage his eldest son
and successor, Francis, to the House of Bourbon; his second son,
Charles, became Cardinal of Lorraine, and his daughter, wife to James
V. of Scotland. Duke Francis, by his military genius and wise
statesmanship; Charles, by his learning and subtle wit, exalted their
house to the lofty eminence it enjoyed during the stirring period that
now opens. In 1558, after the disastrous defeat of Montmorency at St.
Quentin, when Paris lay at the mercy of the Spanish and English
armies, the duke was recalled from Italy and made Lieutenant-General
of the realm. By a short and brilliant campaign, he expelled the
English from Calais, and recovered in three weeks the territory held
by them for more than two hundred years. Francis gained an unbounded
popularity, and rose to the highest pinna